Romania Solo: One Week of Chaos, AI & Contrasts

I spent just under a week in Romania alone. No travel agency. No group tour. No friend to split the confusion with.

The experiment was simple: navigate an entire country using only an AI tool — Gemini — for logistics, routes, and timing. No guidebooks. No traditional research. Just prompts and a backpack.

I want to be honest with you. Romania is one of the most visually stunning countries I have visited. It also nearly broke me.

Not in a poetic, character-building way — though it was that too. I mean practically. Timetables that don’t match reality. Bus stations scattered across cities with zero signage. Hostels that smelled of damp and disappointment.

And yet. A salt mine so vast and surreal it felt like walking inside a dream. A medieval walled city that stopped me mid-step. Strangers who quietly redirected me when I was lost — not out of pity, but out of something more generous.

What follows is my travel diary from that first week. Day by day. Unfiltered.

Wednesday 3 June 2026 — Bucharest: Arrival

First impressions

I landed exhausted and took the bus into the city. My first hostel was a disappointment from the start. Cramped, an upper bunk I hit my head on more than once, and a persistent smell of damp in the bathroom. Mosquito bites as a welcome gift.

Thursday 4 June 2026 — Bucharest: The Old Town and the Palace

Shaking off the tiredness

The next day I got into the city properly. I walked through the Centrul Vechi (Old Town) and several old churches. Then I joined a guided tour of the colossal Palace of Parliament (Palatul Parlamentului).

The building is staggering in scale — and deeply uncomfortable in its origins. Full city, endless renovation. A decent local dinner, then early to bed. An early train was waiting.

Friday 5 June 2026 — Sinaia & Brașov: A Castle from the Outside

A stop in Sinaia

I took an early train from Bucharest’s Gara de Nord towards Brașov. However, I got off halfway at Sinaia to see Peleș Castle (Castelul Peleș). Since I hadn’t booked a ticket in advance, I stayed outside. Still imposing. Still worth the detour. Book ahead — tickets sell out.

A long wait and a damp hostel

The train onward was delayed by over an hour. I waited on the platform.

Brașov continued the hostel trend: damp, a mould smell in the kitchen, an upper bunk I wasn’t enthusiastic about. Even so, the old town delivered — a genuinely beautiful city centre. A simple pizza and an early night.

Saturday 6 June 2026 — Prejmer & Bran: The Day Everything Fell Apart

Wrong station, wrong plan

This was the day the logistics collapsed completely.

I had planned to go to Sighișoara. Instead, I ended up at the wrong station in Brașov. The city has several train and bus terminals spread across different locations, with almost no connecting signage. Frustrated, I took a chance on a local bus east to Prejmer.

A hidden UNESCO gem

That turned out to be the right call. The Prejmer Fortified Church (Biserica Fortificată Prejmer) — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — was extraordinary. It is one of the largest fortified churches in southeastern Europe. Besieged over fifty times in its history. It showed.

Stuck, then rescued

Then I got stuck. The timetables I had found online were wrong. I tried to hitchhike for an hour. I gave up, found a bus shelter to charge my phone, and waited.

Back at Brașov’s train station (Gara Brașov), I tried to continue on to Bran. Google Maps directed me to get off one stop too early. Several Ubers I booked never showed up. Eventually, a local tour guide noticed me standing there and walked me to the right bus stop.

I got to Bran Castle (Castelul Bran) — Romania’s most famous, and most commercially packaged, castle. Worth seeing. Don’t believe everything the marketing says about Dracula.

Afterwards, forty-five minutes of bus connections back. I shared the ride with an Argentinian traveller. Both of us tired, both quietly amused by the day.

Sunday 7 June 2026 — Sighișoara: Small, Perfect, One Day Only

Finally, the right information

Anna at the hostel reception was genuinely helpful — the kind of person who actually explains things clearly. She gave me the correct information about getting to Sighișoara by Flixbus from Autogara Bartolomeu.

On board, an elderly man became unwell and vomited. The drivers stopped for twenty minutes of what I can only describe as emergency management.

A medieval citadel worth the chaos

Sighișoara was worth every bit of it. A small, almost perfectly preserved medieval UNESCO citadel. Better as a day trip than an overnight stay. I had lunch with a Polish fellow traveller who worked in aviation. It was the best social moment of the trip.

I took the Flixbus back and paid for an extra night at the hostel rather than push forward. The right call.

Monday 8 June 2026 — Sibiu & Alba Iulia: Heat, Stress, a Private Room

Too hot to stay

Early train to Sibiu — another historic city. The heat was heavy and close. I was also in the middle of a difficult conversation at a distance. As a result, I couldn’t be present. I shortened the visit and caught the bus to Alba Iulia.

Things finally shift

Things improved. A private room — finally — in a place just outside the city in Oarda. Some evening sightseeing around the Alba Carolina Citadel (Cetatea Alba Carolina) — a star-shaped fortress and one of the largest of its kind in southeastern Europe. A good meal. Early sleep.

Tuesday 9 June 2026 — Salina Turda & Cluj: The Best Day

Underground and out of time

I hadn’t slept properly. Awake at 3am. Too hot. A creaking bed. Still, Tuesday became the best day of the trip.

I took the bus north to Turda, then a taxi directly to Salina Turda. Three hours underground in a salt mine so vast and strange that time dissolved. It doesn’t look like the inside of a mine. It looks like somewhere else entirely. One of the most surprising places I have ever been.

Cluj-Napoca: a clean ending

Then on to Cluj-Napoca. The first room smelled of disinfectant and I couldn’t stay. Without fuss, the host upgraded me to a large, clean room.

Evening sightseeing around Piața Unirii. A buckwheat pancake. Yoghurt ice cream. Bag sorted. Ready to fly home.

Wednesday 10 June 2026 — Home

Flight from Cluj’s Avram Iancu International Airport back to Sweden.

What Romania taught me

On logistics and planning tools

Travelling alone here was, above all, an exercise in patience.

Don’t trust any planning tool — digital or otherwise — for ground-level logistics in Romania. I ran this trip as a deliberate experiment with Gemini. The information was often wrong. Online timetables rarely matched reality.

CFR Călători operates the national trains. Autogari.ro is the best available bus aggregator. Even so, both require on-the-ground verification. Cities like Brașov have four or five separate bus and train terminals. Static data misses everything that makes a place actually function.

On language

The language barrier is real. Outside the main tourist corridors, very few people speak English or German. You navigate by gesture and persistence. In fairness, that produced some of the trip’s more genuine human moments.

On solo travel culture

Solo backpacker culture essentially doesn’t exist here. Romanian hostels often function as temporary accommodation for local students rather than social hubs for travellers. I spent more time alone than I expected. That is not what solo travel is supposed to feel like.

On what I’d recommend instead

If you want to see Romania, go with a private guide or a small arranged tour. The country is genuinely worth it. The infrastructure, however, is not built for independent navigation — not yet, and possibly not ever. Take the logistical stress off the table, and you will be left with something remarkable.

I’m closing this from my room in Cluj.

It wasn’t the easy, social trip I’d imagined. Nevertheless, it proved, again, that I can sort out almost anything on my own.

Tomorrow I fly home to Sweden.

Reference Links

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